


falling

by emily_420



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 04:02:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1211968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emily_420/pseuds/emily_420
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's an angel following Kanda, and he's never sure whether that's a blessing or a curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	falling

_i._

The first time he appeared, Kanda was eight and he and Alma had fought so hard and so long that there was blood and teeth on the ground, cuts and bruises all over them.

“Who the hell... are you?” Kanda had panted out, nowhere near enough air in his lungs, eyeing the form’s large, feathered wings apprehensively.

He’d smiled, a small, pitying smile, and Kanda decided that he didn’t like him.

“They call me Allen,” he said. Everything about him was so _white_ – hair and shirt and teeth and wings – that Kanda was squinting.

“What–“ he coughed up some blood; it fell haltingly, mixed with saliva, onto the grass below him; he was barely managing to prop himself up on his elbows. “Just what the hell are you?”

“For now, I’m breaking the rules,” Allen said, smiling wider, as if sharing a secret.

There was a bright light – so, so bright that it wrapped up everything and hid it from view – so strong that Kanda slammed his eyes shut – and when it was gone, so was Allen, along with his and Alma’s injuries.

When Alma came to, he started yelling excitedly – “Whoa, Yuu, check out how quick I healed!” – and for three months he tells everyone he meets that he’s got the superpower of ultra-fast healing. Kanda didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.

_ii._

When he was eleven, he started thinking more seriously about religion. (Kanda had been having Religious Education lessons at school for years, but he’d never paid attention, thinking that it was stupid.) England being as it was, the only one he’d heard about was Christianity.

So one weekend, he walked out of the house, ignoring Tiedoll’s calls of “Yuu, my boy, where are you going?” to head down to the village church.

He crossed the road unnecessarily  at least four times to avoid busybodies who would ask him an endless string of questions, having somehow gotten it into their heads that since he didn’t have any parents, he was their business.

The priest had a look of apprehension as Kanda approached him at the altar, but that was to be expected, given that the previous week, he’d punched a nun in the face for using his first name.

“Can I ask something,” Kanda said, not quite a question, and the priest – wearing a rosary and wire-rimmed glasses on a string around his neck, his thick hair flecked with grey – smiled warmly.

“Of course, my child.”

“I’m not your damn child,” he bit out, then exhaled hard through his nose.

“When I was younger,” Kanda started shortly, arms crosses, eyes fixed on the stained-glass window over the priest’s right shoulder, “I saw this. Thing. It looked–“ he gestured to the figure centred in the window, wings spread, “kind of like that. But it was a man. Said his name was Allen.”

Hearing that seemed to fill the priest with a special brand of humble satisfaction. He sat down with Kanda in a pew and explained that it had been an angel, a messenger of the Lord; he told Kanda that to have met one, and have a miracle bestowed upon him, he was truly blessed.

The priest sent him off with a Bible and the promise that if Kanda ever needed anything, he’d be there to help.

When he got home, Daisya had yelped “Is that a _Bible?”_ incredulously.

He’d yelped again when Kanda kicked him in the shin.

_iii._

In his fourteenth year, Kanda almost died five times. It sounds kind of incredible for someone that age, but he had a sharp tongue and knew an impressive amount of curse words. Add to that his penchant for violence and his bad habit of not respecting anyone ever, and, well.

That year, Kanda thought that the priest had lied to him, because every time he got close to biting it, he could see Allen out of the corner of his eye, hiding, waiting. It seemed more like a curse than anything else; almost like he had his own personal Grim Reaper following him around.

Every time he saw Allen that year, Kanda was filled with a greater desire to live, if only so that he didn’t have to see Allen’s smile saying, “I’m sorry, you were so young,” as he carried him to the afterlife.

Every time Kanda saw him, lurking patiently, he got the hell up, dusted himself off, thought, “Not yet.”

_iv._

When he was sixteen, Kanda was back in the same church, staring blankly at the large, stonework crucifix on the wall behind the altar. It was a Thursday, after school was out, and he freely admitted (to himself, at least) that it was odd behaviour, even from him.

A priest walked over to where he sat in the last row of pews, asked, “Is something the matter, Kanda?” It was the same man as when he’d first gone there – did that guy live there or something? You know what, whatever. Beggars can’t be choosers, and all that.

“A guy in my class,” he started saying, frowning and not looking away from the cross, “was saying today that the Bible says it’s wrong to be gay. Which doesn’t make sense to me, because I’ve read that shit, like, eight times, and it never came up.”

“That’s a misinterpretation,” he said patiently, sitting beside Kanda and joining him in staring up at the crucifix. “God’s love does not discriminate, Kanda. He loves all of us equally.”

People tended not to believe him when he said he was Christian. Whether that was because he was Japanese or because he fought more than he studied, Kanda wasn’t sure. Who wouldn’t be, though, with a goddamn angel stalking them? He sort of wondered what he was getting himself into sometimes, though.

_v._

He _really_ wondered, when he kissed Alma for the first time, and the first thing he said was, “Is this okay, though? I mean, I know you’re really religious...”

Kanda kissed him again to shut him up.

_vi._

At nineteen, Kanda was sitting up late watching-but-not-really-watching TV in his and Alma’s tiny London flat. Alma had been meant to come home two hours previously, and while he was no stickler for punctuality, Alma wasn’t normally that bad. So Kanda was sitting wide awake, checking his phone every five seconds, when Allen appeared again. Only this time, he wasn’t dying.

Kanda felt his stomach drop, like a huge weight had been dropped into it, as he stared hopelessly at the now-familiar figure that had materialised in the armchair that Alma liked to curl up in.

(There was irony in that somewhere, but Kanda was having trouble seeing it.)

“He’s gone,” Kanda said blankly. Allen wasn’t smiling, didn’t say anything, merely stared back at him, grey eyes holding something that he couldn’t pinpoint.

“Can’t you _do_ something?”

“No,” Allen said, shaking his head sadly. “That would be crossing the line–“

“Do I _look_ like I give a shit?” Kanda said hotly, a jumpy, panicky feeling growing unchecked in his chest.

“Once people are gone, they’re gone, Kanda. It is expressly forbidden–“

“ _Fuck!_ ” Kanda shouted, burying his face in his hands, elbows on his knees. “Fuck.”

Allen stayed with him as he cried himself to sleep, swearing and feeling his heart being ripped apart, torn irreparably to pieces. He didn’t tell him that he was breaking the rules just by being there, but he could hardly leave, either. Not when the boy – man, now, really – that he had come to know as unbreakable, unstoppable – tough and spitfire and refusing to go down – was falling apart before his very eyes.

He didn’t let Kanda see that he was crying, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> extreme au where kanda is more human than he wants you to know
> 
> unfortunately alma had to die. not sorry tbh. 
> 
> i don't think it's too much of a stretch for kanda to be christian??? idk he's part of the church anyway bye


End file.
